More than half of all members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science believe in some kind of deity, but this belief is excluded from scientific textbooks and articles.

Two centuries ago, Pierre-Simon de Laplace developed a theory about how a cloud of dust could flatten out to form a solar system. The emperor Napoleon asked Laplace why he had not considered the Creator of the universe in his model. The famous French cosmologist-mathematician tersely replied that he “had no need of that particular hypothesis!”¹ This illustrates the materialistic (mechanistic, naturalistic) stance that science has taken, which excludes God from its explanatory menu.

Science does not have to exclude God. The leading pioneers of modern science, such as Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Pascal, and Linnaeus, advocated that God was the primordial creator. These pioneers illustrate that very good science can progress when God is included in the equation. Many of the fundamental laws of science were discovered by these pioneers. However, starting particularly in the 19th century, science redefined itself as purely materialistic, and removed God from consideration. Everything had to be explained by the interactions of matter.

More recently, Harvard University biologist Richard Lewontin candidly pointed out in a perceptive statement some of the thinking regarding this subject: “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of life and health, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept material explanations of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”² Now, science explicitly excludes God and has become atheistic.

IMPLICATIONS

Not all scientists are atheists. It is the modern practice of science that is atheistic. A 1996 study indicated that about 40 percent of American Men and Women of Science believed in a God that answered their prayers.³ However, a subsequent query of the prestigious members of the National Academy of Science, U.S.A., indicated that only seven percent believed in a God that answers their prayers,⁴ indicating that the leaders of the scientific community especially favor a materialistic stance.

A more recent Pew Research Center survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science indicated that “just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. By contrast, 95% of Americans believe in some form of deity or higher power.”⁵ The paradox is that half of the scientists who belong to this prestigious organization believe in some kind of deity, but this belief is excluded from scientific textbooks and articles. Often, what is published does not reflect the beliefs of the scientific community as a whole.

How does science, which claims to put a priority on discovering truth, manage to ignore God and the beliefs of many scientists? The current science paradigm is a peculiar combination of a search for truth about nature and the bizarre restriction that excludes any investigation of supernatural activity in nature. This is strange, since science has not demonstrated that God does not exist. Scientism, “[t]he idea that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge that is worth having, and that other forms of knowledge, such as religious or philosophical knowledge, are either inferior or irrelevant,”⁶ dominates in science, repressing the all-important broader reality about how things really are.

On the other hand, the Bible, overwhelmingly the world’s most popular book, takes a more eclectic approach, addressing both nature and God, and instructing us to “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, KJV). In science, you can speculate by making unbridled suggestions, such as the existence of other universes, or the idea that life started on Earth when interstellar space travelers accidently left life-bearing garbage on a previously sterile planet,⁷ but now in science you can’t speculate about God or the supernatural! Science has an anti-religious bias. The laws of science permit researchers to do a lot of good science without invoking God’s activities, but that does not legitimately exclude God from reality.

Science is considered by many to be humanity’s greatest achievement. One has only to mention things like antibiotics, space exploration, atomic bombs, genetic engineering, or artificial intelligence, to evoke considerable awe and admiration. There are other contributing factors to science’s ability to shape public discourse,⁸ but it is hard to argue against success, which can be so intoxicating that all else is ignored. Because of its unprecedented success in explaining many natural phenomena, science feels free to choose to exclude God and become purely materialistic. It is convinced that if there aren’t good answers now, science will eventually provide them!

In the past century and a half, secular science has become a dominant paradigm for a worldview that is honestly believed by many to be true. Its views are respected and influence many other disciplines such as psychology, history, sociology, geography, medicine, and religion. However, it needs to be kept in perspective that worldviews and paradigms change over time, as illustrated by the dominance of intellectualism in antiquity, of authoritarianism in the Middle Ages, and of materialism in a lot of current thinking.

INADEQUACIES

Like the worldviews that preceded it, materialism presents many philosophical and practical problems. Materialism fails miserably when it comes to explaining our deeper questions, such as the meaning of human existence and consciousness, moral values, and emotions. Science contributes little to our appreciation of art, music, religion, and other factors beyond simple materialism. Scientists who, with religious fervor, defend secular materialism are an interesting example of a reality above simple materialism. And there is also the deep question of free will possessed by human beings, which because it is free, rises above the simple cause and effect of scientific materialism. Human beings can examine a lot of ordinary matter, for a very long time, without finding any of these deeper characteristics! If life is just materialistic and has no meaning, why do human societies not treat the deceased as trash, instead of honoring them with memorials in cemeteries?

CONTROVERSIES

At present, God is, by definition, excluded from science. If a chemist synthesizes a molecule, that is defined as science, whereas if God does the same thing, that is not recognized as science! Simple materialism is more predictable than a supernatural entity, but that does not mean that God or the supernatural does not exist. A common argument against believing in God is called the “God of the gaps” argument. It is proposed that whenever those who believe in God encounter phenomena that science can’t explain (a gap), they just invoke God’s miraculous intervention as the reason for it! Secularists propose that although there may be a temporary need to insert “act of God” to fill gaps and suggest a cause for phenomena that science cannot explain, with more research, scientists will eventually find a naturalistic explanation for everything, and will no longer need to give credit to any supernatural activity. Scientists feel more secure when they can observe simple cause and effect in matter. But the kind of God described in the Bible is far more complex and needs to be considered in the equation.

An intriguing thesis, endorsed by a number of leading scholars, including Alfred North Whitehead, R. G. Collingwood, Reijer Hooykaas, and Stanley L. Jaki, proposes that modern science, which developed in the Western world in the 16th and 17th centuries, owes its success to the single, precise, consistent, and rational God of the Judeo-Christian tradition that fits well with the causality of science. Science did not flourish in the Eastern world (Egypt, Greece, India, or China), because of those cultures’ belief in many capricious gods or in the absence of a supernatural deity.⁹ Paradoxically, the very God who may be responsible for modern science has been expelled by that very same science!¹⁰

Materialistic science has a counterpart to the God of-the-gaps theory—the belief that incredible improbabilities can occur over time. This reasoning dominates in significant materialistic venues but soon ceases to be compelling because it enables one to predict all kinds of events happening by simply assuming that with sufficient time, eventually the desired kinds of changes will occur. Like the God-of-the-gaps concept, this concept is difficult to disprove. However, when it is quantitatively evaluated (something that is seldom done), one generally ends up with unrealistic improbabilities. Examples follow.

Evaluations

How could the first life form, evolve all by itself on the original, empty Earth?¹¹ All kinds of delicate organic molecules need to come together at the same time and place to form a living cell that is able to thrive and reproduce itself. But consider the example of merely trying to create one specific protein molecule. Molecular biologist Herbert Yockey of the University of California (Berkeley) calculated how long it would take, by chance, to form one specific protein molecule starting with 10⁴⁴ (that is, the number 1 followed by 44 zeros) amino acid molecules, the building blocks of proteins, in the world’s oceans. He calculated that it would take on an average 10²³ (that’s the number 1, followed by 23 zeros) years to produce one specific protein molecule.¹² Since the assumed geologic age of the Earth is less than five billion years, that time is 10 thousand billion times too short to facilitate the formation of one specific protein molecule.

Furthermore, even if one specific, delicate protein molecule did form, it would very likely disintegrate long before another one had the chance to form, so this is a non-starter! The simplest form of life we know about, a tiny mycoplasma bacterium, has several hundred different specific kinds of protein molecules and likely has some 50,000 protein molecules in its body!¹³ Other studies reveal improbabilities more extreme than the one described above, yet science textbooks assume that the spontaneous generation of life is a fact.

Random mutations can sometimes provide microevolutionary survival-of-the-fittest advantages, especially in rapidly reproducing microorganisms. But, for several reasons, the survival-of-the-fittest model runs into trouble in complex environments. A major problem is that beneficial mutations are very rare. Recent studies suggest that the ratio of beneficial mutations to deleterious ones may be somewhere between one out of a thousand and one out of a million.¹⁴ To get around this problem, some point to the many so-called neutral mutations that have essentially no effect, but when it comes to the survival of the genome, essentially all mutations are harmful and will eventually destroy the whole genome. A mutation can be compared to changes in the letters in a book—just changing one or two letters does not destroy the book— but changing too many will modify it irreparably.

Another difficult problem for evolution is how to provide continuous survival advantage for gradually evolving systems that don’t work independently and have no survival value until all the necessary parts are functional. For instance, the muscles in the iris of the eye, which adjust the size of the pupil, are a useless encumbrance if they lack a control system to respond to light intensity and/or accommodation so as to provide some survival value for the continued existence of the muscles. Adding all the many necessary random mutations all at once by chance, in order to provide evolutionary survival value, is essentially impossible.

Another challenge to evolution is the great plethora of deleterious mutations that keeps on getting larger and larger as generations follow more generations. For advanced animals like reptiles, birds, and mammals, which have few offspring, evolutionary survival of the fittest is especially challenged because there are insufficient offspring for natural selection to attempt to eliminate bad mutations, in order to achieve progress. Geneticist John Sanford, who has thoroughly studied this problem, points out that “there are so many bad mutations, we cannot afford to pay the reproductive cost of eliminating them. Since we cannot afford to stop degeneration, we obviously have nothing left over in terms of surplus to fund progressive selection.”¹⁵ The plethora of bad mutations overwhelms the rare positive results from natural selection.

A major challenge to assume long geological ages on Earth is the rate of erosion. Rain runoff, streams, and rivers transport eroded sediments from the planet’s continents to the sea; and the total quantity of sediments (which has been estimated in at least a dozen studies conducted by geologists) indicate that the present average rate of erosion of Earth’s continents is about 61 meters (200 feet) per million years. That may seem slow, but at that rate, our present continents, which average 623 meters (2,000 feet) above sea level, would be eroded down to sea level in about 10 million years!16 In other words, in the putative four to five billion years assumed as the age of our continents, they could have been eroded down to sea level at least 400 times—but they are still here! A common explanation given by geologists is that the reason we still have continents and mountains is that the rocks are renewed from below. That suggestion cannot be taken seriously, since the whole geologic column, dated largely by radiometric methods, is still there. We have not gone through even one complete cycle of erosion and renewal! This shows that there is good scientific evidence that favors the biblical account of beginnings.

PREDICTIONS

Science’s current secular stance will not surprise the Bible scholar, since the Scriptures predicted this 2,000 years ago when the apostle Peter indicated that the idea of Creation and the Flood would be challenged. He stated that “scoffers will come in the last days” who “deliberately overlook this fact, . . . [that] the earth was formed . . . by the word of God, and that . . . the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” (2 Peter 3:3, 5, 6, ESV).¹⁷ Throughout science today, evolution has replaced a belief in supernatural creation, and long geologic ages have replaced the Flood as an explanation for the fossil record.

THE VERDICT

In a broad search for truth, the “elephant in the room” is materialistic science, which insidiously excludes God from consideration. With millions of scientists interpreting nature without God, and only a small minority including Him, the dominant paradigm has a strong secular bias. Materialism engenders within its own parameters unrealistic explanations that are simplistic and incapable of addressing humanity’s deeper questions about origins, the meaning of human existence, and our ultimate destiny. If science is a genuine, open search for truth, it should be willing to follow the data of nature, wherever it may lead; and there is a significant body of scientific data that is hard to explain unless one believes in a perceptive Designer.¹⁸

In a biblical context, the deep tragedy is that secularism encourages agnosticism or atheism, which are destructive to the eternal salvation extended to us from a forgiving and just God. As teachers or students survey the millions of scientific articles published every year, and they find virtually no mention of Creation or the Flood, this can be overwhelming to the uninitiated and easily interpreted to mean these events never occurred. One’s worldview can be shaped by what one does not find. Many youth lose confidence in their church and leave the religious faith of their families, opting for encouragement from a very successful science enterprise that arbitrarily excludes any reality beyond simple materialism. Christian parents, teachers, scientists, and everyone committed to a truthful discussion of the deep questions of origins, need to purposefully share information about the insidious distortion of truth engendered by science’s paradigm that excludes God. The Seventh-day Adventist Church, with its iconic seventh-day Sabbath as a memorial of creation, has a special opportunity and responsibility to counter science’s secularism.

Ariel A. Roth (PhD, University of Michigan, Michigan, U.S.A.) is a retired director of the Geoscience Research Institute in Loma Linda, California, U.S.A. He has edited the journal ORIGINS for 23 years and has published two books and more than 200 articles dealing mainly with the controversy between science and the Bible. See http://www.scienceandscriptures.com. E-mail: [email protected].

Recommended Citation

Ariel A. Roth, "How Excluding God Restricts What Can Be Known," Dialogue 37:2 (2025): 5-9

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. W. C. Dampier, A History of Science and Its Relations With Philosophy and Religion, 4th ed. rev. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949), 181.
2. Richard C. Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” Review of The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan in New York Review of Books 44 (January 7, 1997): 28–32: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/01/09/billionsand-billions-of-demons/.
3. Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, Commentary, “Scientists Are Still Keeping the Faith,” Nature 386 (April 3, 1997): 435, 436.
4. _______________, Leading Scientists Still Reject God,” Nature 394 (July 23, 1998): 313.
5. Daniel Masci, “Scientists and Belief,” Pew Research Center Report (November 5, 2009): https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
6. Matthew B. Courtney, “The Problems With Scientism in Epistemology: A Critique” (February 18, 2023): https://www.matthewbcourtney.com/post/the-problems-with-scientism-in-epistemology-a-critique.
7. Thomas Gold, “Cosmic Garbage,” Air Force and Space Digest 43:5 (May 1960): 65: accessed April 22, 2024, at https://www.airandspaceforces.com.
8. Ariel A. Roth, Science Discovers God: Seven Convincing Lines of Evidence for His Existence (Hagerstown, Md.: Autumn House Publishing, 2008), 227–231.
9. For further discussion and references, see ibid., pages 29, 30, 34.
10. For further elaboration, see Jonathan McLatchie, “Atheist Philosopher Explains Why Intelligent Design Is Not a ‘God of the Gaps’ Argument,” Evolution News & Science Today (April 26, 2024): https://evolutionnews.org/2024/02/atheist-philosopher-explainswhy-id-is-not-a-god-of-the-gaps-argument/.
11. For a recent listing of some of the issues involved, see Nick Lane and Joana C. Xavier, Comment, “To Unravel the Origin of Life, Treat Findings as Pieces of a Bigger Puzzle,” Nature 626 (February 28, 2024): 948–951: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-02400544-4.
12. Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 248–255.
13. Calculated from Number of proteins in cell - Bacteria Escherichia coli - BNID 115702 (harvard.edu), accessed July 16, 2024.
14. John C. Sanford, Genetic Entropy, 4th ed. (Ware, Hertfordshire, U.K.: FMS Publications, 2014), 24.
15. Ibid., 147
16. For calculations in this paragraph, see Ariel A. Roth, Origins: Linking Science and Scripture (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1998), pages 263–266. Monte Fleming writes that “a volume of sediment equivalent to all of the land on earth could be trapped between the world’s existing dams in just 2.5 million years” (Stories About Earth’s History: A Geologist’s Dissent From Deep Time [Copyright by the author, 2021], 15).
17. The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
See the “DISCUSSION” tag in: Sciences and Scriptures: http://www.sciencesandscriptures.com.

SOURCES FOR ADDITIONAL READING:

ONLINE

• Earth History Research Center: http://origins.swau.edu
• Theological Crossroads: http://www.theox.org.See especially the Study Guides.
• Sean D. Pitman, “Detecting Design”: http://www.detectingdesign.com/wp
• Jeffrey Nicholls, “Scientific Theology: A New Vision of God”: http://www.scientifictheology.com
• Geoscience Research Institute: http://www.grisda.org
• Sciences and Scriptures: http://www.sciencesandscriptures.com

BOOKS

• Leonard Brand and Arthur Chadwick, Faith, Reason, and Earth History, A Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design, 3rd ed. (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 2016). Free on Kindle.
• Paul A. L. Giem, Scientific Theology (Riverside, Calif.: La Sierra University Press, 1997). Available online at http://www.scientifictheology.us.
• Monte Fleming, Stories About Earth’s History: A Geologist’s Dissent From Deep Time. Copyright by the author, 2021. See Amazon Books. Available on Kindle.
• L. James Gibson and Humberto M. Rasi, eds., Understanding Creation, Answers to Questions on Faith and Science (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press, 2011).
• L. James Gibson, Ronny Nalin, and Humberto Rasi, eds., Design and Catastrophe, 51 Scientists Explore Evidence in Nature (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 2021).
• Ariel A. Roth, Origins: Linking Science and Scripture (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald, 1998).
• Ariel A. Roth, Science Discovers God: Seven Convincing Lines of Evidence for His Existence (Hagerstown, Md.: Autumn House Publishing, 2008).